Employee Survey Tips: Benchmarking

I spent seven years leading methodology and data science for employee engagement surveys at Peakon and Workday. Over that time, I’ve worked with everyone from tiny tech startups to massive retail brands, mining operations, football clubs, and even government entities. Now that I’m no longer directly involved in survey creation, I can share my honest thoughts on the most effective ways to run employee surveys.

See the complete set of tips & tricks for running employee engagement surveys.

Benchmarking an employee engagement survey by comparing your engagement survey results with external norms can certainly offer valuable context. But it’s not the silver bullet some might expect. Here’s what to keep in mind:

1. Benchmarking Provides Essential Context
   Some survey areas naturally score higher or lower. Rewards and Workload questions, for instance, almost always come in lower than Team or Culture questions. That's just a reality of running employee surveys, and not something to worry about. A good benchmark helps you see if those lower scores are “normal” or if they need extra attention.
2. Competitive Comparisons Matter Less Than You Think
   Unlike when dealing with customer experience surveys, you're not only competing against your traditional industry competitors when it comes to talent. Many employees will hop from one industry to another multiple times over the course of their career. So, while it’s undoubtedly interesting to know how you stack up against similar businesses, it might not be the most relevant comparison. Don’t overly fixate on competitive benchmarks when shaping your engagement strategy. More about choosing a benchmarking composition.
3. Managing Upwards
   One thing you'll never change is that boards and executive teams love metrics and comparisons, and will aggresively question any numbers you give them. That means you can't afford to ignore or neglect the quality of your benchmark. A good rule of thumb is that you want 30 companies in your benchmark in order to have high quality estimates of average question scores.

Sunbeam

Sunbeam is a feedback analytics platform designed to make working with open-ended, text-based feedback as straightforward as working with scores. Too many organizations overlook the rich insights hidden in qualitative responses, and Sunbeam aims to fix that. By combining deep industry expertise with cutting-edge AI, Sunbeam makes it simple to analyze and act on text feedback, ultimately helping HR teams unlock the full potential of employee engagement data.